Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has issued new guidelines instructing visa officers to conduct deeper verification of all language-proficiency test results—IELTS, CELPIP, TEF Canada and TCF Canada—submitted with immigration, study-permit and work-permit applications. The operational memo, dated 23 June 2026 but publicly disclosed on 26 June, directs officers to match applicant photographs with identity documents and to flag suspicious scores to the Temporary Migration & Fraud Referral Unit. India is by far the largest source of foreign students and skilled-worker applicants to Canada; more than 220,000 Indians sat an IRCC-approved English-language test in 2025. Consultancy ApplyBoard estimates that at least 11 percent of Indian Express Entry profiles will now face secondary review, potentially adding two to four weeks to processing times. The crackdown follows several high-profile cases in which fraudulent IELTS certificates were used to obtain student visas. In March 2026, Canadian Border Services Agency uncovered a Punjab-based racket that had sold fake scorecards to over 600 applicants. Ottawa’s new instructions aim to protect programme integrity ahead of a planned 2027 expansion of annual immigration targets. For Indian universities running articulation programmes with Canadian partners and for corporates transferring staff under intra-company work permits, the message is clear: ensure employees test only at authorised centres, keep original score reports on file and double-check that details across documents match perfectly. Immigration lawyers advise applicants with legitimate but older test results to consider retaking exams if scorecards are damaged or illegible; requesting a duplicate from testing bodies can take eight weeks. Firms sponsoring bulk applications through the Global Talent Stream should budget extra lead time and may wish to front-load language testing earlier in the assignment-planning cycle.
Source: Business Standard
